Gaming Roundup: Dogs! Ghosts! Robots!

The above trailer is actually really funny and you should totally watch it

This week, we've played a bit of Kid Icarus Uprising (it's good! Probably the best game on the 3DS, if we're honest), all of Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City (it's... fine! We guess!) and the first hour of Ridge Racer Unbounded, which is Ridge Racer in name only and plays a bit like Need for Speed crossed with Burnout. And not in a good way.

If you had to buy one of them, pick Kid Icarus Uprising. That's our advice.

ALSO! We saw Assassins Creed III in action on Monday, and sweet holy Jesus but we're excited. And we found out that the cartridge for Goldeneye 007 contained full emulation software to make Spectrum games run on the N64. This is only interesting if you're a massive nerd which we, sometimes – secretly, indoors – are.

Anyway, “news”:

Sleeping Dogs releases gameplay footage, it looks pretty nifty

Hong Kong-based crime caper Sleeping Dogs seems to be taking the aesthetics of GTA IV and marrying them with the senseless violence of Saints Row 3 and the madcap vehicle chaos of Just Cause 2 in a Vegas-style shotgun ceremony. ALL OF WHICH IS GOOD. We'll support any game that lets you bounce from one speeding car to another in the middle of a motorway chase. That's just common sense.

Ghost Recon Online lets you kill people with microwaves

Not in the way we'd hope, though. Ghost Recon Online is a free-to-play sister title for upcoming third-person terrorist frag-fest Ghost Recon: Future Soldier; while it has no single-player storyline and slightly cheaper-looking graphics than Future Solider, it's still going to be plenty of fun, we reckon.

The video above details the Assault Class, which gets access to shotguns, assault rifles, big nasty riot shields (with added robot legs!) and a mast that pops out of their back and kicks out deadly microwave radiation, disorientating harming anyone nearby. We were following them right up until the “robot legs” part.

We always preferred Thundercats growing up, but seeing as they haven't been developed into a multi-million film series (… yet) we'll have to make do with this Transformers game instead. Despite some fairly shoddy previous efforts with the franchise, this looks fairly exciting: the devs are keen to have transformation a key part of the game and each different form of a particular robot lending itself better to different situations, play styles, and enemies.

That's good – it's better than just turning into a car when you need to get somewhere and turning into a big stompy robot when you don't. At that point you might as well just make two games.

Draw Something is good; Drawception is better

This is what we were given to draw. We think we did a passable job

You've probably heard of Draw Something, a free App for Android and iOS that's taking the mobile gaming market by storm – it's basically a portable, endless game of Pictionary that you play forever, and instead of using a cheapo pencil you just sort of jab your finger at your touchscreen until a picture comes out.

Week-old title Drawceptiontakes the idea of Draw Something and runs with it – one player decides on a subject to draw, a second player draws it, a third player guesses what it says, a fourth player draws their guess, a fifth player guesses what the drawing is, and so on. It's the artistic equivalent of Chinese Whispers, and it's so addictive that we haven't done any work in the best part of three days. Plus, it's free, like the first dose of crack is when given to an unsuspecting youngster. But then it stays free, so it's basically unlimited crack. Yes.

Max Payne 3 multiplayer gives you communal Bullet Time

Part of the problem with adapting slow-motion gunplay classic Max Payne to a multiplayer arena is the use of Bullet Time – Max's inherent power to slow down the world around him and dodge incoming bullets. In single player, turn it on and you're an instant badass – in multiplayer, you're just a much slower target.

To get around this, Rockstar use a line-of-sight mechanic to tie players together – as long as you're looking at someone in the dense, winding arenas of play, they move just as slowly as you do. While we're a little worried about arbitrarily slowing down as we run across open terrain, we trust Rockstar enough to make it all work in practice. We'd trust those guys with our first-born child, if we ever have one.

Battlefield 3 reimagined as a RTS

Hey, you like Battlefield 3? You like Command and Conquer: Red Alert? Well buddy, you'll love this video.